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The Bell Jar:
by Sylvia Plath
Post-reading
Strategy: Music Storytelling
The concept of this assignment is to tap into different
creative outlets than are typically explored in our
English classrooms. Music is capable of
communicating some things as well as written language,
and other things even better. Emotion, mood and
atmosphere, and even some types of action or narrative
can be expressed through all manner of different forms
of sound. In addition, when I assess students'
learning in regards to a major text, I want to see that
they have absorbed some of the major topics or themes
and have thought about them enough that they can
demonstrate that knowledge to me. There are many
ways of showing me that they've "gotten it," and making
a soundtrack is just one of them. I like these
sorts of alternative assessments because they give the
students a break from the tedium of writing yet another
paper, and the students who excel at non-traditional
learning forms can use these alternatives to demonstrate
some of their other skills. For this particular
assignment, the students will work in pairs or groups of
three to make a playlist of songs that they feel would
be a good soundtrack to the book. The emphasis
will be on choosing songs that either capture the mood
of the piece, perhaps the quirks or mood swings of one
or another character, or that describe the overall arc
of the narrative story. They will present these to
their classmates, and should be ready to answer any
questions. They will also be asked to write a
short reflective piece covering why they chose the
songs, and how they decided what order to put them in.
Each song should be on there for a good reason and the
songs should relate to the book in some discernable way.
They will be graded on their thought process and the
effectiveness of the music to do what the group members
want it to do, not necessarily on their mastery of the
technology or the quality of the music.
Click the link below to
see a formal lesson plan introducing this activity. The
document is available in either Adobe Acrobat or
Microsoft Word formats.
Music
Storytelling Lesson Plan
or [MS
Word]
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Literacy
Philosophy
